Little Treat Culture: How Restaurants Can Leverage Snacking Trend

Little treat culture — the growing trend of people indulging in small-sized snacks or indulgences as a way to self-care or reward themselves can be transferred to the restaurant plate, providing opportunities for profitablity and creativity. According to an 84.51° study, 74 percent of US consumers under 35  snack at least a few times daily. And, according to Datassential, 55 percent of Gen Z love trying new foods in familiar formats. 

"Snacking is all about meeting the moment when a craving strikes," Luis Martinez, senior vice president of R&D and Commercialization at Rubix Foods, a culinary and food science-focused provider of flavor and functional ingredients, told Modern Restaurant Management (MRM) magazine. "With trends moving at the speed of social, brands need to move fast to be a part of buzzworthy conversations. That means having easy-to-execute LTOs in the pipeline and relationships with trusted suppliers who can make the traffic-driving magic happen."

In his role, Martinez manages the Culinary, Innovation, and Commercialization teams, and oversees R&D project implementation. He has 18 years of experience in the food and beverage industry and holds a M.S. in Food Science Management 

Martinez said that to tailor an existing menu to match guest snacking preferences, operators need to capitalize on social media trends, connect to cultural relevancy and plan around seasonality. 

"Whether it's launching a lineup of global flavors in french fries inspired by the Olympic games or running specials on chicken wings during football season, operators can make simple tweaks to their existing menus to ensure the brand is connected to the cultural moments that matter most to consumers," he suggests. "Finally, while the seasonality of certain ingredients is obvious, the seasonality of the applications they are featured in is not. For example, fall is prime time for pumpkin-flavored everything but 31 percent of milkshake LTOs are released in the fall, too. Pairing seasonal ingredients with seasonal applications will maximize consumer interest in their menu."

According to Datassential, 47 percent of consumers say that they don’t get hungry at standard meal times and 74 percent of consumers have had a snack in place of a meal in the past week.

"Operators who have snack-specific offerings during these intermittent meal times will steal share from their competitors and drive an increase in frequency," he said. "It also allows operators to introduce new flavors in familiar formats. Consumers are more willing to try something new when it’s introduced in an application they recognize and when it doesn’t require them to take a chance on a full meal. So, for those who are looking to experiment with a trendy flavor, pair it with a concept consumers know and love – French fries, chicken nuggets, smoothies, donuts – to make it less intimidating for anyone on the fence."

The snacking trend also dovetail swith two other trends—the value proposition and the desire for elevated experiences.

"Now more than ever, consumers are seeking more value menu options. And with the price gap between LSRs and FSRs shrinking, operators have to adapt,"  Martinez said. "Thirty-nine percent of consumers say a lower price point would motivate them to try a new snack according to Datassential, so if your value menu included more snack-sized items, it could be incentivizing to these consumers. Not only is a lower price point important but consumers want to feel like they are getting a good bang for their buck, too. Investing in novelty SKUs that would make existing items more premium (i.e. cold foam, custom-flavored fry toss) would provide a different experience for your consumers and give them something to talk about."

What flavors are people gravitating toward that we will see on restaurant menus? Martinez predicts there will be more inspiration from the snack aisles. 

"Think salt and vinegar chicken wings, BBQ chip french fries and co-branded collaborations with leading snack brands on both the sweet and salty ends of the spectrum. Snacks can be sippable, too! Beverages like specialty coffees, high-protein smoothies, dirty sodas, frozen lemonades or anything containing boba are all rich enough (and convenient enough) to stand alone as snacks."